‘There was another name I picked up,’ McCreath continued. ‘Someone called Nicholls. Deakin didn’t seem to have much time for him, but he was obviously part of the group. He never came to Brussels, though, as far as I know.’
Funny how Brussels kept cropping up, thought Harry: first with Pike, then Paulton and Deakin, now McCreath and the Bosnian storm-troopers.
He made McCreath go through the descriptions again, getting him to paint a picture and give him every bit of detail he could recall. It was standard debriefing procedure tailored to drain the mind of every scrap, even to the point of recalling material that would serve no specific purpose, in the hopes that it would drag out something he could use.
But Deakin and his crew had been very clever.
‘Tell us about the Protectory,’ said Ballatyne. ‘Names and numbers.’
‘They never told me much — and nothing about themselves,’ McCreath replied. ‘I got the impression that there are three main guys running it, but Deakin hinted at others he could call on if needed. He laid it on that the Protectory was there to help people like me who’d been asked to do too much for Queen and country.’ He grunted. ‘He made it sound like a charitable organization for damaged squaddies. I fell for it, I admit. Christ, it was a no-brainer; I was in a mess, no life to speak of, no way back and they were offering me a way out. It was a bloody sight better than what I’d been living with for the past four years, so I said yes.’
‘And what exactly were they offering?’ Ballatyne asked.
‘A new identity, ready cash and help with relocation. There were places I couldn’t go, Deakin said, because I’d be vulnerable. But that left plenty of places I could disappear to, no bother.’
‘Like where?’
‘Low cost countries like Thailand, Cambodia, a couple of places in Latin America, even Australia and Canada. He said a fair number of Americans have ended up there.’
‘What did they want in return?’
This time McCreath hesitated, and Harry guessed it was probably out of shame at having considered trading information for a better life. ‘They wanted anything new, especially on comms systems, networks, satellites and ECMs — electronic countermeasures. They were particularly interested in the new battlefield communications system I’d been working on when I got wounded.’ He scowled. ‘They seemed to know quite a lot about it already, though. I think they’d already done some work on it.’
Pike, thought Harry. They’d have got something from him before he turned and ran. With another 251 Signals Squadron expert on their hands, Pike wouldn’t have been worth trying to hold on to, not once he’d made his intentions clear.
‘Did they ever mention any other British army personnel they were after?’
‘Not to me. The focus was all on me.’
‘Anyone named Tan?’
‘Tan? No. They didn’t mention and I didn’t ask. They didn’t seem the kind of people to mess with; I got that message pretty quick.’
‘So what made you back out?’
McCreath sighed. ‘They were asking too much. No way did I want to go back to Afghanistan, but that didn’t mean I was prepared to sell the kind of information I had to the highest bidder.’ He frowned and twisted his hands together. ‘I know it’s easy to say it now, but I realized it was my mates I’d be selling down the river. . exposing them to God knows what, now or in the future. It wasn’t like I’d planned on becoming a traitor, you know? I just wanted. . out. Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to call anybody from the hotel, but I needed to talk to someone. So I bribed a cleaner to let me use her mobile and rang the mate I’d been staying with before Deakin turned up. He told me about Pike; said he’d heard on the grapevine that Pike had arrived back in London, ready to call it a day, but he’d been taken out.’ McCreath looked down at the table. ‘I knew it had to be Zubac and Ganic. They’d been away for a couple of days by then. I was a bit slow on the uptake, but I figured if I stalled or tried telling them I wasn’t going to sell, I’d be next.’ He gave Harry an empty look. ‘So I bugged out and headed back here.’
‘To do what?’ said Ballatyne.
‘I don’t know. Hand myself in, I suppose. I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly, but I knew if I stayed where I was, I’d most likely end up dead.’
Harry let the silence lengthen, then said, ‘You were lucky.’
‘I know. I should say thanks, but I suppose it would be pointless, wouldn’t it?’ He looked miserable and suddenly couldn’t meet Harry’s eye.
‘No, I mean you were lucky before today. You heard names, saw two of the Protectory and the two Bosnians face to face. That was a lot of exposure for someone who was going to be allowed to disappear into the sunset with a new ID and a load of cash.’ He stood up. He needed to keep moving. ‘Fact is, from that moment on, you could identify all of them and that made you a liability. Whatever else we know about the Protectory, one thing’s clear: they’ve survived for a long time now. They only let out the kind of personal information you got for one reason.’
McCreath swallowed as the full realization of his position began to sink in. ‘Go on.’
‘Because once they’d drained you of the information they wanted, you weren’t going to be allowed to live long enough to pass anything on.’ He walked to the door. ‘There was nothing in this for you and never has been. Just like Neville Pike and at least three others we know of. No future, no money, no new ID. You were expendable.’
THIRTY-SIX
While Harry and Ballatyne were talking to McCreath amid the wreckage from the attack on the police station, Zubac and Ganic were closing in on the M25 motorway, the east-west link south of London, their sights set on taking a ferry to France. Their exit from the attack site had been a close-run thing; as they left through the rear gate, they had run into an armed response vehicle responding to an all-units call. But they had been undeterred; a few rounds of fire from the Rugers had disabled the police vehicle and they had managed to walk away amid the confusion and screams from pedestrians ducking for cover.
Two hundred yards further on, they had made a pre-arranged hand-off of the rucksack containing the weapons to an elderly Jamaican at a grab-and-go craft stall. It disappeared under the table and in return they got a holdall and keys to an anonymous grey Renault waiting in a pub car park off Coldharbour Lane. From there it had been a simple route through the back streets to take them south and out of immediate trouble before a cordon could be set up.
Zubac was feeling humiliated by the results of their attack. They had not failed to carry out an assignment like this in a long time — especially on a lightly armed facility where resistance should have been minimal. With superior firepower and the element of shock backed up by the M84s, it should have been a cake-walk. They should have been able to clear a route to McCreath and eliminate him with the minimum of fuss and walk away before anyone could stop them. Instead, they had been drawn like amateurs on a chase of their quarry through the corridors of the police station, only to run into a choking cloud of potassium bicarbonate in a stairwell. Zubac suppressed the desire to rub his eyes and scrabbled around in the footwell where he found a plastic bag containing a bottle of water, a change of clothing, packs of sandwiches and a packet of antiseptic wet-wipes.
He ripped out a handful of wet-wipes and handed them to Ganic, who was driving. His friend was red around the eyes from the effects of the potassium, but had avoided the worst of the powder. Zubac had been leading the way and had started up the stairs just as the first wave had come down, cloaking him in its embrace before he could back off. He poured water into his cupped hand and splashed it over his face, swearing fluently at the man who had done this to them.
‘We had guns and stun grenades!’ he howled angrily, splashing more water. ‘How could this happen? They had silly little sticks, that’s all!’